I Miss Working from the Office

Re:I Miss Working from the Office by dagw on Saturday November 21, 2020 @08:28AM (#25169632)

Maybe things have gotten better but I worked at a couple of large engineering companies in London 5-10 years ago and cramped, shitty, open plan offices with cheap ancient hardware was very much the norm at every place I worked at and visited. Coming from offices in Norway and Sweden I was shocked at how terrible their working conditions where.

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Re:I Miss Working from the Office by user5994461 on Saturday November 21, 2020 @09:10AM (#25169818)

Incidentally I've worked in London for the past few years, in a bank. Every desk in the building is equipped with aeron chair and multiple monitors. Yes every single one in the whole skyscraper (10 000 employees).

That includes multiple floors full of developers. On our floor the entire department had quadruple monitors (24" IPS Dell UltraSharp monitors if you're interested). Allegedly we're privileged because the norm is only 3 monitors for developers, the story goes that when the department was opened almost 20 years ago the head decided that developers would get proper equipment or the department wouldn't be opened.

Back to Dell, many companies are simply procuring equipment from Dell. The most classic display they sell is the Dell UltraSharp 24" IPS display, which is really good and really affordable.

London is the biggest tech hub in Europe with the most tech companies, quite of few of which are very serious about equipment because tech culture. I've not seen a company that didn't have dual displays since I moved here. I can't imagine a company that can't buy a display if you tell them what do buy. I don't want to jump into "just leave your company" because it's a bad HN trope, especially in COVID times, but come on, if your company can't procure a display/chair you can find a better company.

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Re:I Miss Working from the Office by benhurmarcel on Saturday November 21, 2020 @03:21PM (#25172500)

Not every sector/location allows to find a "better company". We're not all superstar JS developers in a tech hub.

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Re:I Miss Working from the Office by mortehu on Saturday November 21, 2020 @03:03PM (#25172374)

I believe a small increase in productivity per employee for a bank is worth a lot more than in most other industries. In my experience the quality of the equipment scales with the per employee profitability.

I've never worked for a place that prevented me from bringing my own chair, ottoman, keyboard and mouse. Usually I was the only person on the floor to do so, though.

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Re:I Miss Working from the Office by baby on Saturday November 21, 2020 @11:55AM (#25170787)

Worked in London and your experience doesn’t reflect mine.

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Re:I Miss Working from the Office by jokethrowaway on Saturday November 21, 2020 @01:22PM (#25171566)

I had a somewhat different experience working in London (multiple clients) for the last 7 years. I guess it depends on the employer, but generally hardware / furniture is not that expensive compared to salaries and rent of the building in London, so things are decent quality.

Open office are an unfortunate reality, space is expensive.

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